ArchivingWith the current explosive rate of data growth and the costs involved with managing and maintaining storage solutions many businesses today are facing the problem of what to do with all the information they have accrued.
This data growth has been driven primarily by regulatory requirements (HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, MiFID), corporate governance, human resource policies, and operational needs such as electronic filing of customer transitional records.
For all of these needs, archived data must be secure, accessible, and affordable. In addition, many organizations want the opportunity to store less critical data on a more cost efficient medium.
Before embarking on an archiving project it is imperative that you identify which regulations pertain to your business, this can be a project in it’s self. Our team of consultants are happy to work with you to identify which regulations should be taken in to consideration as part of your archival project.
Once we have assisted in establishing the regulations that you must comply to, the next step is to identify the data and where the data resides.
Working out which data is suitable for archival (either short term or long term) is an important task. Here at Skye we work with a number of data audit tools that will identify how your data is being accessed. Once we have identified your user’s trends we will be able to highlight very accurately which data can/should be archived.
The next decision to be faced is which medium is best for you to archive to?
- Single Instance Storage?
- Tier 2 Disk?
- NAS?
- WORM?
- Tape?
We will work with you to select the correct medium for your businesses needs; these decisions will be based upon data retention times, data retrieval times & regulatory compliance.
It is imperative that your medium selection is married up to your regulatory compliance i.e. if your data retention period is 25 years, there is no point archiving to tape. How would you retrieve the data in 25 years time? Would the hardware be available for this and would it still be able to talk to the systems of that time? If the wrong medium is selected, the implications in the future could be very costly to your business.
Our team of experienced consultants are here to help you plan your archival project and assist you in mitigating the risks involved by ensuring we help you select the correct solution for your individual business needs. If you would like to discuss your archival needs, please do not hesitate to contact a member of the team on 01932 232 345
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